Another pause as he tried to recall their arrival, but the days had blended into each other and the bit he had to get out wasn’t getting any easier.
‘I don’t know why,’ he said, still hesitant, ‘but for some reason she had taken if for granted we’d get back together—physically. I think I might have told you that. It didn’t make sense, especially when she didn’t seem to care about Steffi at all and got downright angry when Alex suggested he photograph Steffi again.’
Having got that out, he lapsed into silence because he couldn’t think of any more words to say.
Bill, resting against his legs, reached up one hand to grasp one of his and they sat in silence for a while until finally she stood up and perched on the arm of the chair.
‘If you think back to when she was persuaded by Alex to keep the baby so he could photograph her, at that stage she was determined to give Steffi up for adoption as soon as she was born, so I would imagine, during her pregnancy, she was determined not to get emotionally attached to the child she was carrying.’
‘Hmm,’ was all Nick could add to that suggestion, although it did make a kind of sense. ‘But after that, when she did keep Steffi?’
‘Again it was for Alex. She’s been his favourite model for ever, his muse, as you called her, and suddenly here’s this interloper capturing his attention. You said she got angry when he wanted to photograph Steffi here—maybe it’s nothing more than Serena’s own insecurity. Maybe that’s why she wanted you back again, so she’d have the security of someone special in her life. From what I’ve read of Alex, he’s getting old, and a model’s working life doesn’t last for ever, so...’
Nick reached up so he could pull Bill’s head down to his and kiss her.
‘You realise you’re making excuses for a woman you barely know, and what you do know about her must make your teeth itch.’
Bill grinned at him and he felt his heart swoop around his chest in a great burst of love.
‘I’m not really. I’ve never understood other people’s relationships and I don’t try, but I would imagine there’s huge insecurity in any model’s life—are my looks going, am I getting fat, will I get the top jobs this year? Possibly having Steffi around only added to it. If you think about Serena’s childhood, she barely stopped working to be a child, so she’s probably at a loss as to what to do with one.’
‘You’re probably right,’ he told her, and kissed her again, because not only was she beautiful, and bright, and a wonderful woman, but she was kind, and compassionate, and understanding—and he wanted to kiss her anyway.
‘Do you think she’ll fight for Steffi?’
So they were back there again—back in doubtful land, with Bill remembering the pain of loss.
‘I can’t promise that she won’t,’ he said.
Now, Bill thought to herself. Now’s the time to commit to Nick.
‘Of course you can’t,’ she said, ‘but I can promise that, whatever happens, I’ll be with you every step of the way—with both of you.’
Nick stood up and pulled her into his arms again, holding her close, not kissing her, just holding her, and Bill knew that everything would be all right. Somehow they would get through whatever the future might hold because their love was strong enough to—
Well, to move mountains!
‘Marry me,’ he whispered in her ear, just as Steffi came toddling back, her high-pitched ‘Beee!’ making them spring fairly guiltily apart.
* * *
The day, which had begun underground about a million years ago, was finally drawing to a close. With Steffi in bed, and Dolores visiting her family for the last few days of the leave Nick had taken, he and Bill were alone on the deck, lights out, looking out to sea, sipping hot chocolate with marshmallows in it because it had been that kind of day.
‘You didn’t answer my proposal,’ Nick complained when, his drink finished, he set the cup down and took Bill’s hand in both of his.
‘What proposal?’ she demanded, turning to face him. In the dim light reflecting up from the marina her hair was a dark cloud around her pale face, her eyes nothing more than deep shadows.
‘My proposal in the living room’
‘In the living room?’
He could practically hear the gears turning in her head and wondered how far he could push her before she exploded into anger.
‘I asked you something,’ he reminded her, telling himself that teasing her was only getting a little of his own back for his panicked agony of the rescue mission.
‘You did not!’
Good, she was angry now and he loved an angry Bill. Once she’d let fly at him he could take her in his arms and feel the tension in her body then feel it ease as he held and kissed her, eventually feeling it turn to a different kind of tension...
And why the hell was he wasting time teasing her like this when he could be holding her, kissing her right now?
He stood up and pulled her out of the chair, wrapping his arms around her just as he’d known he would.
‘I said, marry me, remember?’ he whispered as he brushed the hair back from her ear to kiss her in the hollow just below it. ‘Steffi came in and you didn’t answer and now it’s too late because I’m taking no answer as a yes and I’m going to kiss the breath out of you.’
‘Starting here,’ he added, his mouth taking possession of hers.
‘Like this,’ he murmured, sliding his tongue between her lips...
* * *
Random questions flashed through Bill’s head. Was this okay? Hadn’t it been too sudden? Was it just Steffi that had brought them together? This was Nick, but was this love?
She heard a faint moan and thought it might have been hers, then her mind went blank and she gave in to sensation—to the warmth in her blood, the fire along her nerves, the prickly expectation on her skin and the ache of desire deep within her body.
All this from a kiss?
All this and more because kissing Nick was like nothing she’d ever experienced before, like nothing anyone in the universe could possibly have experienced because otherwise they’d all be doing it right now...
‘Bed?’
She heard the word but was still grasping for its meaning, too lost in sensation to be thinking straight.
Had she hesitated too long that Nick released his hold on her, just slightly, so he could look down into her face.
‘Too soon?’
She smiled, and shrugged, and felt the heat that told her she was blushing like a schoolgirl.
‘No—yes—oh, I don’t know.’
‘I do,’ he whispered, and kissed her once again, so gently, so thoroughly, so beautifully she had an urge to cry—again! ‘It’s been a very long and enormously emotional day, one way and another, so for tonight we shall be abstinent. In fact, how soon can you organise a wedding? We could stay abstinent till then, get a few days off somewhere, with Dolores minding Steffi, and stay in bed the entire time, room service providing enough in the way of food to keep up our strength.’
Bill smiled at him—at her friend Nick, trying, as always, to do the right thing. She rested her hand on his cheek and said, ‘Or we could go to bed tomorrow night...’
EPILOGUE
GIVEN THE SIZE of Bill’s family, they’d decided to hold Steffi’s second birthday party in a park. Balloons hung from trees, a marquee festooned with ribbons provided shade and shelter should it be necessary, and twenty-three small boys and girls, all dressed, more or less, as bears were rioting on the grass.
‘Do we have to do this party thing every birthday?’ Nick demanded, coming to sit beside his wife, who was settled on a folding chair in the shade of a tree, watching three of her brothers trying to organise a pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey game with very little success.
Katie, the eldest of the
de Groote grandchildren, had adopted Steffi from their first meeting, and she was organising some of the smaller ones in some game that involved standing up then falling over, the little ones screaming with glee.
‘I think every second year will be enough,’ Bill told him, ‘but then on the off years this one will probably need a party, so get used to it.’
Nick reached over to pat the very large bulge of his wife’s stomach.
‘If you got this guy out today or tomorrow then we could combine the parties, considering Steffi’s real birthday isn’t until tomorrow.’
‘Yes, but would it be fair?’
She was actually frowning over the fairness of combined birthday parties for her children and Nick felt again a gust of love so strong it nearly struck him down. He had thought that after a year of marriage this might stop happening, but although he loved Bill all the time—well ninety-nine point nine per cent of the time as she could still be aggravating—these gusts of love still came out of nowhere, leaving him shaken at the thought that this might never have happened—that they might never have got together in this way, just gone on being friends and lost the magical, rewarding, cosmic wonder that was their love.
Steffi, with Katie’s help, was blowing out the candles on the bear birthday cake when Bill felt the first contraction.
Hmm, the doctor had said any day now, although she still had a fortnight to go.
Ignoring it, she helped cut the bear into small sections and handed around plates of gooey chocolate cake.
The second contraction suggested things might be getting serious. Could she really have the baby on Steffi’s birthday?
This time last year she’d been preparing to get married—they’d decided their daughter’s birthday was as good a day as any.
Preparing to marry Nick—her BFF.
It still seemed surreal, yet sometimes when she caught an unexpected glimpse of him and her insides turned upside down, she knew that it was real—somehow they’d moved from friends to lovers, from friendship to passion so hard and hot she could feel herself blushing right now as she thought about it.
She’d read somewhere once that love was all-encompassing, and as the third contraction tightened her belly, Bill looked around at all her family, at Gran, wearing bear ears on her head, various de Grootes in fancy dress, Steffi the cutest bear of all, theirs now Serena had agreed they have custody, Dolores, on standby for when Bill went into hospital. Yes, love was all-encompassing!
Nick came and stood beside her, his arm coming to rest around her shoulders.
‘Not to worry you,’ she said quietly, ‘but you might drop me off at the hospital on your way back to the apartment.’
He turned to look at her, his face going pale under his tan.
‘You’re serious?’
She smiled and with difficulty got close enough to kiss him on the lips.
‘Of course! I’m a nurse, remember, I know these things.’
‘But shouldn’t you be sitting—or lying down—or doing something?’
‘I am, I’m counting the minutes between contractions and you’ve been to all the pre-natal classes, you know I can stand up and move around as much as I like all through the birth if I want to. Right now I want to watch everyone enjoying themselves, but you might speak to Dolores and tell her we’ll need her to move in tonight.’
Nick stared at her.
‘You’re for real?’
She had to laugh.
‘Nick, you knew this was coming. You said yourself today or tomorrow would be good. Surely you’re not going to go to pieces on me now?’
He wasn’t, of course!
He was a doctor, he knew about this stuff, it was just that his brain had stopped working and his legs were none too steady, and he wasn’t sure that he could handle having two children—could he love them equally, could he ever love another child as much as he loved Steffi?—and then there was Bill, and he didn’t know that he could go through seeing her in pain like he’d seen other women during labour, and—
‘Nick!’
Bill’s voice brought him out of his funk.
Well, almost.
‘Go and talk to Dolores, ask Kirsten if she’d mind organising the clean-up here at the park, then we’ll put Steffi and all the presents in the car, you can drop me at the hospital, then when Dolores gets to the apartment you can come back to the hospital.’
He stared at her.
‘And bring my bag—the one that’s packed. We’ve been through this.’
Nick stared at her some more, saw her smile and knew she knew exactly what he was thinking.
She kissed him once again, although he felt the wince of pain she gave as another contraction grabbed her body.
‘We’ll be fine,’ she promised him. ‘You’ll love this baby differently from Steffi but still love him just as much. Love is the one thing we’ve got plenty of. And I won’t die in childbirth and you won’t faint, watching it.’
She looked at him again and added, ‘Now, was there anything else?’
He shook his head and took her in his arms.
‘Except to tell you that I love you, Mrs Grant,’ he said, his voice so husky he wondered if she’d heard the words.
‘That’s good,’ Bill told him. ‘Now go and talk to Kirsten and Dolores and find Steffi and the presents and—’
Nick cut off the instructions with another kiss and when Bill kissed him back he knew she was right, and that this new baby he and Bill had made would be every bit as special as Steffi, and—
Well, he couldn’t really remember all the other things he’d been worrying about.
* * *
Stuart Alexander Grant, weighing in at a splendid three point eight kilos, arrived on his sister’s birthday, much to everyone’s delight. Holding him in his arms, looking down into his red, downy face, Nick felt again that rush of pure, unadulterated love he’d felt when he’d first held Steffi.
‘We’ll be right, mate,’ he said to his son, then looked up into the radiance of Bill’s smile, at Steffi cuddled up to Bill on the bed, her little fist holding tightly to Bill’s curls, and he knew they’d all be right—his family!
* * * * *
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ISBN: 9781460313039
Copyright © 2013 by Meredith Webber
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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One Baby Step at a Time Page 15